The present invention relates generally to hay harvesting machines, commonly referred to as mower-conditioners, and, more particularly, to a light hay baffle for a disc mower-conditioner to improve the feeding characteristics for light crop material into the conditioning mechanism.
Mower-conditioners have been provided for the harvesting of hay for a number of years. A mower-conditioner severs standing crop material and conveys crop material rearwardly into a conditioning mechanism without depositing the severed crop upon the ground. A disc mower-conditioner is provided with a disc cutterbar having a number of transversely spaced rotatable cutter units operable to sever standing crop material by impact action and a conditioning mechanism mounted rearwardly of the disc cutterbar to receive and condition the severed crop material. Although the conditioning mechanism has undertaken many forms, a preferred embodiment utilizes a pair of generally vertically disposed intermeshing rubber rolls to crimp and/or crush severed crop material passing therebetween.
With the rotation of the rotatable disc cutter units and the rotation of the conditioning rolls, a certain degree of turbulent air flow is created. While most crops have sufficient mass to be unaffected by the turbulent air, some light leafy crops can be blown around above the disc cutterbar without feeding into the conditioning mechanism until there is sufficient accumulation. The resulting swath or windrow formed from the discharge of crop material from the conditioning mechanism becomes bunchy as a result of the slugs of light crop material feeding through, and does not dry uniformly. Accordingly, it would be desirable to improve the feeding characteristics for light crop material to provide a more uniform feed rate.